B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree

Tupelo Honey

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

A humorous, unconventional family yarn about a young girl navigating a hardscrabble upbringing in northern Mississippi. Tupelo Honey divinely lays out the framework and quirky intricacies of growing up in a house only slightly better than an orphanage. Her days are spent chattering with imaginary friend Moochi and navigating sleepovers at her pious, curmudgeonly grandmother Marmalade and mentally unstable Uncle Randall’s ramshackle house. Things change when her mother, a callous, irresponsible junkie, brings home Nash, a paranoid local drug dealer whom Tupelo surprisingly bonds with during treacherous expeditions to New York and Mexico. Through bong smoke-filled hallways at home, the pageantry of kiddie beauty contests, Sunday School, and spying on Nash burying his stockpiles of drug money in the backyard, Tupelo somehow survives. Eventually, her mother replaces Nash with another man who lives in Los Angeles, and a heartbroken Tupelo begins resenting the unsettled nature of her life. After her grandmother dies, child welfare places Tupelo in a group foster home.

A loveable, engaging, original voice, Tupelo brightens this accomplished tale of dysfunction in a family where nothing had ever been right.